


Five Stages

by IamShadow21



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Cyber Conversion, Euthanasia, F/M, Five Stages of Grief, Five Ways, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Murder, POV Second Person, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-14
Updated: 2009-01-14
Packaged: 2017-12-16 19:00:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IamShadow21/pseuds/IamShadow21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack gives Ianto an ultimatum. In canon, he takes one path. Here are five others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Stages

**Author's Note:**

> The concept of The Five Stages of Grief/Dying belongs to Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. I used them because they fit with the scenarios I came up with. If you watch the episode, you clearly see Ianto go through all of them, in more or less the listed order. (From memory, he inverts Anger and Bargaining.)

JACK: You wanna go back in there? You go in to finish the job. If she's still alive, you execute her.  
IANTO: No way.  
JACK: You brought this down on us. You hid her. You hid yourself from us. Now it's time for you to stand as part of the team. The girl you loved has gone. Your loyalty is to us now.  
IANTO: You can't order me to do that.  
JACK: You execute her or I'll execute you both!  
IANTO: I won't do it. You can't make me. You like to think you're a hero. But you're the biggest monster of all.  
JACK: I'm giving you ten minutes. Then we're coming in. Pick it up.  
 _Torchwood, Season One, Episode Four "Cyberwoman"_

***

**  
Denial   
**  
She’s grotesque, and she’s _wrong_ , but you can’t let her go, you just can’t. You cling to the delivery girl with Lisa’s voice, Lisa’s memories, and frantically think of a way to make this right, to save her. The others will be here at any moment, and you know they won’t listen.

“We have to run,” you say, and with a final, longing glance at Lisa-that-was, you take the hand of this new Lisa and run up through the levels to the Hub. She stumbles, more than once, and you end up half-carrying her part of the way. The blood loss from the transfer, you realise. She’s weak. She needs you to take care of her. You can do that.

The invisible lift is almost up to the Plass by the time the cog door opens. They shout, but you ignore them. You shield Lisa’s body with your own when they start to fire, but none of the bullets hit their target. You’re free.

You know there’s no time, know that the team will reach you before long, but Lisa’s leaning on you heavier than before, her feet dragging and catching on the ground, reducing what should be a frantic run to a stumbling walk. She’s mumbling under her breath in a way that worries you, and beneath the blood on her face she’s pale as milk. 

You’re still hundreds of metres from your car when she collapses altogether. When the team arrive, guns drawn, she’s dying in your arms. You won’t let them take her from you, even after that last, dreadful exhalation, and they end up separating you by force.

“You could have saved her,” you repeat to Jack, struggling against the cuffs.

Jack just looks defeated, and turns away.

The next morning, you wake up in a hospital, blinking at the sister you haven’t seen in months.

“What are you doing in London, Rhi?” you ask, your voice strangely hoarse as if you’ve been shouting.

She blinks back tears, and slowly tells you about the nasty car accident you were in. You’re four years older than you thought you were and you’re back in Cardiff, the one place you swore you’d escape, even if you did nothing else.

“You don’t remember anything?” Rhi asks, and you search again for anything, any clue, any scrap of your life from twenty-one to twenty-five.

“No,” you reply. “Nothing.”

**Anger**  
“Ianto, it’s _me_. You wouldn’t shoot me,” the thing in front of you pleads. “I did this for you.”

You can’t let yourself think of it as Lisa. You can’t. 

“I’m sorry,” you whimper, “I’m sorry.”

She drops with a muffled thud, her eyes wide, her mouth a slack ‘o’ of surprise.

You’ve only just lowered your arm when the others arrive. They didn’t give you the promised ten minutes. Of course, they didn’t. A moment for you to grieve in peace is just too much for Jack to give.

He’s standing in the doorway, watching you, his gun in his hand, but down by his side. His gaze is calculating, scrutinising, as though you’ve just done something particularly curious and impressive. You’re standing amid the bloody remains of the woman you tried to save and an innocent girl, and you don’t think you’ve ever hated him more. 

You could try to shoot him, but you know that he’s the faster draw, and besides, the other three are there, hovering in the wings, no doubt ready to take you down if you even twitch.

Jack was wrong, upstairs, and you know it, now, with an eerie clarity. You have nothing left to lose. 

You raise the gun.

There’s a chorus of pleas from around you, but you ignore them all, and focus on Jack. He looks stricken, desperate, as he begs you to give the gun to him, to just put it down.

“No,” you tell him.

The look of horror and anguish on his face as you pull the trigger tells you that you’ve found a better revenge than shooting him could ever have been, and you feel a brief surge of triumph. 

Then, you feel nothing at all.

**Bargaining**  
“Hold me, Ianto. I need you to hold me. I need you to tell me it’s all right.”

You know it’s not Lisa, not any more, but you lower the gun and step into the circle of her arms anyway. You can’t shoot her. Not now, not yet. Soon.

Despite the lack of visible cybernetics and metal armour, the thing that isn’t Lisa is remarkably strong. She twists and pulls you off balance, and a half-second later you’re locked in to the conversion unit. When you frantically struggle and beg her to stop, she says, “It’s what you wanted. We’ll be together,” beaming down at you, her smile gruesome. Then she pushes the button, and the blades descend.

The pain goes on forever, and you scream, and scream, and scream until the pain is too intense to even do that any more. At some point, the whirring blades stop, and there’s shouting and gunfire, and then there’s nothing but the terrible moaning that you think might possibly be coming from you.

“Jesus, fuck,” Owen says, sounding shaken.

You can hear someone gagging, someone else giving quiet reassurances. There’s the familiar beeping of Jack’s wrist-strap, and you hear, rather than feel, the shackles open up.

“Ianto, sweetheart, open your eyes. Look at me.”

You open your eyes, and Gwen’s standing over you, her face close. She’s pale, but she’s smiling thinly in a way that tells you things are very, very bad.

“’elp... me...” you gasp.

“Owen will be back in a moment, okay? He’s gone to get supplies. You just hold on for me, sweetheart. Hold on. Keep looking at me.”

“’urts...” you sob, and it’s the understatement of your life. There isn’t a single part of you that isn’t screaming with pain.

“I know, love. I know,” Gwen chokes, and hot tears drip from her green eyes onto your face. You can’t reach up to wipe them away, because the very thought of moving is agonising, and besides, you’re sickeningly certain that there’s something wrong with your arms. It’s more or less confirmed when Owen returns with a frighteningly large syringe.

“I’m gonna have to stick this in your neck, mate. I can’t get a vein anywhere else. You ready? Just blink once for yes,” he adds, hastily, and you blink, grateful, because it’s hard enough to breathe, let alone speak right now. Your body’s such a symphony of hurts that you barely feel the shot.

The drug’s not enough to stop the pain, but you float away from it for a little while. There are people nearby arguing heatedly, and you can’t bring yourself to care. At some point, Gwen disappears and is replaced by Tosh. She doesn’t try to reassure you. In fact, she doesn’t talk much at all, but her steady presence is soothing. You take comfort from it, and try to drift a bit more, but the pain is creeping back, like an incoming tide, and all too soon you’re whimpering again.

Owen comes back again, with another syringe, his face grim. “Not long now, mate,” he promises, and though you don’t know quite what he means by that, you cling to it, because for all that he’s a bastard, Owen’s a doctor first and foremost, not a sadist. He’ll stop the pain. You know he will. You blink in reply, and he gives you a false little smile before jabbing you.

The argument continues out of sight. It’s all just nonsense syllables and din to you until Owen starts shouting.

“He’s _suffering_ , Jack, and there’s _nothing_ I can do, except this! If we wait, it’s just a toss up between his heart giving out from the strain, or sepsis. Let him go with some fucking _dignity!_ ”

That’s when you know. You look up, right into Tosh’s eyes, and you gather all your strength to give her a little smile, and blink, once, firmly. Her face is wet, and she nods in reply, before leaving to speak softly to the others. 

They gather around you when Owen gives the final injection. At last, a grey blanket of numbness creeps across you, inch by inch, and your breath starts to stutter. Jack’s right there with his lips on your forehead, and his hand, warm and broad, cupping your cheek. 

“I’m sorry,” he chokes out. “I’m so, so sorry.”

_Me too_ , you think, before everything fades away.

**Depression**  
She’s lying spread-eagled on the floor like a broken doll in a pile of gore, and your world ends.

You drop to your knees and cradle her, letting loose an inhuman, primal howl. Her blood is everywhere, and you didn’t save her, couldn’t save her. You didn’t keep your promise.

The delivery girl with her Frankenstein’s monster incision starts talking, but you soon stop listening to her. She’s not Lisa, no matter what she says, because Lisa is lying in your arms, covered in metal, looking up at the ceiling with unseeing eyes.

You don’t even flinch when the team arrives and shoots the girl down. You just sit there rocking Lisa, stroking her cheek with your bloodied fingertips, until somebody gently takes her from you. Someone else is murmuring soothingly, encouraging you to stand, leading you away, up through the levels of the Hub until you reach the sofa. There’s a blanket around you, and a cup of tea in your hands that you can’t taste. You drink half of it automatically before you begin to sway. The cup disappears, and those hands guide you to lie down.

You wonder if you’ll wake up. Then you realise that you don’t really care if you don’t. You’ve lost the only thing you had.

**Acceptance**  
“Pick it up,” Jack growls.

You don’t. You just stand there, against the doorframe, suddenly incredibly calm. You know you’re going to die, and somehow, it’s a relief. Jack’s shouting, unrecognisable in his fury, the Webley pointed unwaveringly at you, and despite it all, a slow smile blossoms on your face.

“No,” you say again, so softly that you doubt Jack hears it over his own harsh, angry breaths.

The rest of the team are protesting, now. Gwen is tugging on Jack’s arm, Tosh and Owen looking frightened and uncertain. You’re more at peace than you ever remember feeling in your short, chaotic life. You look right into Jack’s eyes, into that mess of roiling emotion, and can’t even bring yourself to feel angry at him anymore. You let your own eyes drift shut, and wait patiently for the bullet that ends it all.

It’s only when you wake up in one of the cells with a pounding headache that you realise you’re not dead. Someone’s removed your tie, which you’re grateful for when you have to lean over the side of the platform and vomit. Once you’re finished, you realise your belt and shoes are missing, too, and your muddled brain supplies the reason – suicide risk. You burst into hysterical giggles at the thought, but somewhere along the line, the laughter becomes a desperate kind of sobbing.

You fall asleep without realising it, because you’re woken later by a hand encircling your wrist, the pressure of fingertips, professional and oddly impersonal, taking your pulse. Owen catches you watching him, but he doesn’t seem surprised that you’re conscious, he just drops your wrist, apparently satisfied, and holds up his hand.

“How many fingers?”

They’re slightly fuzzy, but you correctly identify three, then follow his index finger with your eyes, back and forth.

“You’ve got a hard head, apparently,” Owen remarks, sounding grudgingly impressed. He prods at a tender spot on your temple, and you can’t hold back a grunt of pain. “No fracture, just a mild concussion,” Owen continues, mainly to himself. “Here. Drink slowly, or it’ll come right back up again.”

You prop yourself up on an elbow and take the bottle of water, snapping the seal and sipping at it, resisting the urge to gulp it down. The two pills he hands you are coated, scored, marked with familiar symbols. They’re basic painkillers, paracetamol, the kind sold in shops alongside the cough drops and antiseptic creams. You swallow them without protest.

Owen’s getting up to leave when you say her name quietly. You don’t even inflect it like a question, because somehow, you knew the answer long ago. Maybe even before Jack clubbed you unconscious with the butt of his pistol.

“She was already dead,” Owen says softly. There’s something else he’s not telling you; you know from the expression on his face, but really, at this point, it hardly seems to matter. You just nod, because words don’t really feel adequate. “I’m sorry,” Owen adds, awkwardly, and you think from the unexpected pity in his eyes that he might actually mean it.

“And me?” This time it is a question, but again, you suppose the answer isn’t going to do much good, except, perhaps, to help you to prepare for what’s ahead.

“I don’t know,” Owen answers.

“Thank you,” you say automatically.

Owen flinches as though you’ve struck him, and leaves. He moves out of sight, but not out of the vaults altogether, because you can hear him talking to somebody, his voice an unintelligible murmur. That’s when you realise that Jack is there, was always there.

You push yourself upright, breathing deeply as you wait for the dizziness to subside. The not knowing isn’t as frightening as you think it should be, logically. Perhaps because you’ve already resigned yourself to death once, today, and you’re too emotionally exhausted to do anything but sit and wait for judgement to fall. However, whatever Jack decides to do, whatever your punishment turns out to be, you’re ready.


End file.
